Reduce, Recycle, Re…Eh

I read today that NYC Mayor Bloomberg has proposed a six-cent surcharge for each plastic bag a consumer uses to carry off purchased goods. Critics say it’s a terrible time to start introducing more fees into consumers’ lives, but I say it’s about time. In fact, I think more communities should start up this initiative. It forces consumers to be more green-minded, and as for those who aren’t fazed by the nominal fee, the shame of having to buy a plastic bag under this model is theoretically enough persuasion (a great point made by the article linked above).

France has been doing this for years now. Of course, you pay more per bag, but the bags are rather sturdy and made from recyclable plastic. That is one aspect of reusable materials at which France has a leg up over the U.S. I’ve noticed since coming back to the States that 99% of the plastic food packaging and bags that have come into my possession aren’t recyclable. While I'd prefer paper--or better yet, something wholly resuable--over a recyclable plastic bag any day of the week, to this I say, "Tsk, tsk, America."

You know those reusable shopping bags made of hardy plastic or canvas now selling like hot cakes in most eco-conscious supermarkets? Again, France has us beat. All manner of French people, whether a frail octogenarian lady or a strapping twentysomething male, does their shopping with the aid of a caddy (see pictured). It’s the perfect wheely-bag solution for carting grocery purchases and more around the city. While to the American eye it looks “so grandma,” in France, it just is. There’s no cultural taboo. And it just so happens to be a very green solution. (I have to admit, I never went there as my canvas bag from Cole Hardware managed to do the trick. But, it was yet another reason I got stared at—having a shopping container other than a caddy! Jeez, the French do not like nonconformists.)

You may wonder what came first—the caddy or the green movement—and I can tell you with utmost confidence that it was certainly the caddy. The French like to boast about how “eco” they are, but on a micro scale, it’s not entirely true. Yes, they recycle, but in a rather slipshod manner. My former Parisian office—in which tons of photocopies were made and left for dead—only started recycling paper in September. Of 2008! OK, OK, it’s a tiny office, you might say in its defense, but I observed nary a recycling bin in the headquarters of one of France’s biggest banks, where I taught three days a week. In that same building, I once wanted to throw away a soda can during a lesson. I saw two identical-looking bins in the conference room where I was teaching. I asked my student which bin I should use, he looked at me quizzically, and I had to ask, “Which is regular trash and which is recycling?” He replied, “Come on, this is France—there is no difference.” The ugly truth is that businesses don't want to pay recycling fees. Blurgh. Don't get me started.

When recycling is done in France, it’s not very well thought out. Some Parisian residential buildings get big bins, while others get jack and tenants have to cart their mounds of recycling to public recycling depositories, intermittently located on sidewalks. You never know where you might find one. Our building was thankfully graced with bins; there were a couple large ones for “all recyclable stuff” and a tiny one for glass. I noticed that while our fellow tenants were avid recyclers, they didn’t always put recyclable items into the former bin, shoving in things such as non-recyclable plastic bags (a.k.a. the bane of my existence, aside from junk snail mail...all that wasted paper). Has no one taught them how to read for the proper recycling logo? And they call Americans lazy!

Consequently, the designated glass-only bin at our building was always overflowing, and thus tons of little (often non-recyclable plastic) bags of glass bottles were left scattered on the ground around it. Our poor super had to deal with that problem every week when it was time to take out the bin, and I’d venture to guess that those non-recyclable bags made their way into the recycling, too. You’d think that in a country where so many glass bottles of wine are consumed, there would be a better solution.

I know the U.S. is spotty on this issue, and maybe my experience is so filtered through the lens of the San Francisco bubble (my local waste collector provides compost bins, for crying out loud!), but it seems that urban Americans, at least, have more successfully built recycling into daily habits. Let’s see if New York’s new experiment will help keep more icky-for-the-planet plastic bags at bay.

Ode to Paname

I reconnected with an old friend in SF last night, and one of the first things she said to me was, “I read your blog for a couple months when you first started it, and I thought, ‘Jess is miserable there. All she does is complain about it.’ So I stopped reading it altogether.”

Huh. I wasn’t so much offended by her remark as I was taken aback. Really? Did I “French out” and shout my complaints from the blogosphere rooftops? Yeah, maybe a little, but not constantly and always with humor. However, as a stereotypical “positive American,” this post is my proof to the world that I do not use the blog as a vehicle to kvetch. Because, truly, doesn’t everyone want to hear you gush when you’re inevitably asked, “How’s Paris?” And so here it is, my light and fluffy treatise on the things I’ll miss the most about "Paname."

When my sister visited during our last week in Paris, I realized that every time I uttered the phrase, “This is one of my favorite spots in the city,” I was standing in a garden or park. I’ve always been attracted to green spaces; part of the reason I love SF so much is that it marries the urban and the natural so well. But Paris takes the art of landscaping to a whole new level. Whether the simple symmetry of the 18th century buildings, arcades, and rows of shady trees forming the perimeter of the Place des Vosges; the cheerful flowers at Parc Monceau and the Tuileries; the multi-faceted wonderland of the Jardins du Luxembourg; or the red ivy spilling down the old walls of the Carnavalet gardens, I ache for the rare and hence overwhelmingly delicious bursts of color on the Paris landscape, manicured to breathtaking effect.

I will also miss the art of la table. I appreciate how much energy the French put into food preparation and presentation—it all matters and therefore if it takes time, it’s worth it. I loved strolling down the streets of Paris and gazing into the vitrines to find the latest work of patisserie perfection. How does Pierre Hermé manage to get that syrupy dew drop to stay flawlessly posed in the edible rose petal topping his raspberry crème pastry? What’s in Michel Cluizel’s secret sauce that makes gold-dusted chocolate even possible?! You know, people would say when I first moved to Paris, “You must be indulging in pastry 24-7.” In fact, I didn’t indulge in eating the pastry regularly, but rather I indulged in eye candy on a daily basis. That’s one thing that is absent from daily life in America. We do have excellent food, but that level of French elegance is hardly part of la vie quotidienne.

Speaking of food, there’s nothing like walking past a boulangerie, just for the smell of the best bread in the world baking to golden completion. Even the best French-style bakery in the States doesn’t come close. I am also sad to have said goodbye to the good folks at Chez Omar, our local cous cous joint celebré. Not only did we love the food and worship at the feet of their harissa (the only surefire spicy food to be found in Paris), but the restaurant was also kind of our Cheers—they all knew us there and loved to joke around with us and call N ‘l’arab’ because of his part-Syrian heritage. It’s the kind of convivial relationship with local merchants that’s not guaranteed in Paris.

However, that’s not to say we only experienced it over cous cous. Our butchers were jolly and kind, our greengrocer sweet and thoughtful, but no one made me smile as much as my local pharmacist. “Heeeeeeeeh-lllllloooooooooooooo, Miz Jessica Mordo!” he exclaimed every time I walked in to refill my allergy med prescription, followed by him belting out a random show tune (occasionally with jazz hands). We established early on that I was an American who lived in SF and grew up in NYC, and that he was an extra-fabulous, rabid Broadway musical/New York/Castro District fan. We instantly got along. Plus he was the only other person in my neighborhood aside from me who felt no compunction about wearing gym-style clothes in public. Without fail, every time I went into his shop, he was wearing basketball shorts and a tight, white tank top. I think he just wanted to show off his buff physique.

And another thing I’ll ache for? In America, we are in the shallow end of the pool in terms of living history. Europe is the deep end of the ocean by comparison. I’ll miss turning a corner and discovering yet another Gothic church or 18th –century hôtel. My personal favorite is the Église de St-Germain, which was built in 586 A.D. (I mean, COME ON!) and now stands beside a Christian Dior boutique. (How’s that for incongruity?) I’ll truly miss walking (always walking! I’ll also miss living car-free) around the narrow, cobbled streets of the Marais and imagining the centuries’ worth of characters, plot arcs, and changes in setting over the course of l’histoire.

The hardest part of leaving any place, though, is not the sights and smells and random acquaintances, but the deeper relationships you created that make it home. I already miss my lovely French and expat friends and hope to lure them over for a SF visit sometime before we make it back to France—which hopefully won’t be for too, too long.

One Last Jab at Our Sanity?

In the 13 months we’ve lived in our lovely Marais apartment, we’ve never had any plumbing disasters—and luckily so, as I’ve heard tales of unspeakable frustration in getting a plumber to come over and deal with rapidly accumulating puddles in an efficient manner. So it was just our luck that on Saturday night, exactly one week before we’re vacating the premises and moving back to the States, our toilet promptly decided to not work. After some detective work, we applied a temporary fix until we could make it to the only hardware store open on Sunday in Paris (open until noon, at that).

Cut to Sunday morning, when we discover that we have no hot water in the apartment. No way could the two plumbing events be related, we surmised. One problem has to do with a broken part in the flushing mechanism that affects water flow. The other has to do with the water heater, not to mention the toilet pipes don’t even appear to be attached to the water heater. Not a chance, nuh-uh.

What to do? I called our landlord, who lives in the south of France and very rarely puts in an appearance in the city. I proceeded, in my much improved but still somewhat rough-around-the-edges French, to explain that we had an emergency situation with our water heater and needed some advice on how to deal.

“Bah, qu’est-ce que tu veux? Je suis pas plombier.” (What do you want? I’m not a plumber.)

His response stunned me so much I almost dropped the phone. I said I of course knew that, but could he please advise me on how to proceed? Did he have the phone number of a plumber on hand who could help?

It was like I’d said absolutely nothing, because he repeated exactly what he’d said before. We kept going back and forth until he said there was nothing for him to do. Um, WHAT??? I then handed over the phone to N, whose fluency could help tackle this impasse more effectively…or so I thought.

N repeated what I’d already said about five times and then was bowled over by a screaming tirade of several variations on the themes of “It’s Sunday morning! Sunday!” and “What do you expect me to do, you pushy, entitled, American ass? Fix it myself? It’s not my responsibility.” (Oh, really? It isn’t?) N fought back with a few good ones, such as “Yes, we invented this situation to inconvenience you,” “French law states that fixing household problems is the landlord’s responsibility and I’ll quote you the legal code to support that,” and “I find your attitude utterly lacking in niceness and therefore inexcusable” (well, I’m paraphrasing on that last one).

At one point N put the phone on speaker so I and our visiting sisters could hear the landlord’s sustained ranting. This continued for about 10 minutes until finally N threw off his boxing gloves in disgust and said we’d call a plumber ourselves the next day (as of course, plumbers don’t work on Sundays in France) and send the landlord the bill. He finally managed to hang up and was about to dash out the door to the hardware store for the wayward toilet part, when the phone rang. It was the landlord.

He laid on the passive-aggressive guilt-cum-spite tactic real thick: “Well, now that you’ve ruined my day, I’m canceling my trip to Belgium—which I’ve already begun, as you called me while I was driving on the highway—and coming to Paris to show you that I absolutely do not know how to fix your water heater.” Wow. What are you, 13 years old and angry at the world?

N talked him out of this absurd plan but the guy still would not calm down. N couldn’t take it anymore, not to mention was pressed for time due to the hardware store’s soon-to-be closed doors. He pawned the landlord off on his sister, whose French is perfect and who knows far better than us the nuances of national etiquette. She apologized profusely for our “ignorance” of how things “work” in France and for disturbing him on a Sunday. He was still sputtering a bit, but she managed to calm him down. Pfew.

Perhaps we are ignorant and could’ve been more apologetic about calling him on a Sunday at 11 a.m., but holy crow, man! You’re the landlord! You’re the responsible party! We never presumed he should drop everything and get his landlordy ass over here to fix our water heater, but rather very clearly asked for conseil. He seemed more pissed off that we bothered him on a Sunday than anything else, which is a typical French attitude. Le sigh. Well, we learned that our landlord is cranky and irrational and that ce mec là, il est un vrai con. At least we’re out of here in a couple days and so thus don’t have to care.

Oh, and P.S. It turned out that as soon as we fixed the toilet and the tank refilled, the water heater started to work again. The heater was never broken, and we can blame our ignorance of our apartment’s byzantine plumbing system for disgracing our landlord so. All’s well that ends well, or so the saying goes.

Seeing Orange

This is N hijacking Jess’s blog. Apparently, I need to hit some kind of frustration threshold before I’m inspired to write anything.

My mobile phone provider, Orange, has recently made The List, in company with such French greats as banking and taxis. Yes, I realize that nobody loves their mobile phone provider back in the U.S. either, but what has transpired recently with Orange is definitely an order of magnitude more insufferable than the tales of woe I’ve heard from U.S. consumers, which generally seem to revolve around dropped calls and/or poor reception.

Any discussion of mobile phone service in France must begin with the discrepancy in cost between mobile phone services in the U.S. versus France. I was going to ballpark this part, but curiosity got the better of me and I decided to get factual by looking up figures on the websites of Orange and AT&T. The results are shocking. Looking at comparable, fairly low-end calling plans at each site, I found that Orange’s cost per minute of talk time (about $0.51) is fifty times higher than AT&T ($0.01)! To be fair, I summed up AT&T’s 5000 nights and weekend minutes as well as the 450 minutes of peak talk time, but even when you exclude the nights and weekend minutes Orange is still nine times more expensive. Orange basically gives you two hours of talk time for $60, although you do get unlimited calls to three numbers. Anyway, you might chalk this up to the higher cost of living in France, until you consider that broadband/cable TV/VOIP telephony is available as a package for about $50, and the Internet is roughly 15 times faster than the speeds that are readily/affordably available in the U.S. (16 Mbps at my place!)

All this is a prelude to my iPhone story. When the iPhone 3G was announced, I decided to finally cave in and get it, having held out on the first generation. Orange, like AT&T in the U.S., is the exclusive iPhone carrier. Luckily for me, or so I thought, I was already an Orange subscriber. Thus, I was surprised to learn when I went to the Orange store to get the iPhone that I had not accumulated enough “points”, and so the iPhone would cost me about $600, versus the $300 advertised price (converting roughly from Euros here). However, they did inform me that if I were to cancel my current subscription, and join as a new customer, they could offer me the $300 price since I’d be a new customer acquisition that way. Go figure. The catch was that since I would be cancelling my subscription before my full year was up, I’d have to pay the remaining two months of subscription.

At this point, before having purchased the actual phone, I mentioned that I might be relocating out of the country soon, and asked whether I’d be able to take the phone with me and cancel my new subscription without any penalties. I would of course have not gotten the phone if the answer hadn’t been “oh sure, no problem.” I think there’s a law that prevents providers from charging cancellation fees in the event of an international move. In any case, they repeatedly told both Jess and I (in separate stores) that it would not be an issue. So we went ahead with it.

Fast forward four months – Jess and I are leaving the country soon. I begin the process of notifying Orange that I need to cancel my service due to the fact that we are leaving. During the half dozen attempts to reach the cancellation department at Orange over the course of a week, I experienced a distinct pattern of neglectful customer service which was, in fact, entirely circular, much like a mobius strip. It went like this:



Call
Navigate byzantine menu tree to indicate to the system that I am interested in cancelling my subscription
Wait on hold
Customer Service rep responds who has not been informed that I would like to cancel my subscription
Verbal explanation to CS rep that I would like to cancel my subscription
CS rep asks for my identifying information
CS rep then tells me that he actually can’t execute the cancellation, and that I need to speak with the cancellation department, which he puts me through to
Wait on hold
CS rep comes back on to tell me that the cancellation department is so busy (surprise surprise) that they can’t answer the phone, and to try back later
This happened over and over. I suppose denying your customers the ability to cancel your service can be called a retention strategy.

Eventually, I managed to speak with a cancellation rep and explained to him that I needed to cancel my service, as well as “unlock” my iPhone so it will work on other networks. Without the unlock, the phone would be useless back in the U.S. The rep informs me that the unlock will cost $150, since I have had the phone for less than six months, although this fee was never mentioned by the people who sold us the phones and told us it would be “no problem”. However, this is actually fair, since Orange heavily subsidizes the cost of the phone in exchange for a 1 or 2 year commitment by the customer, and we have only had the phone for three or four months. So I agreed to the fee, and told him to go ahead with the unlocking procedure, which actually needs to go through Apple. The rep informs me that all that is left for me to do is to send a letter requesting the cancellation along with proof of my employment abroad. Jess and I duly send in these letters, thinking that would be that.

A week later I get a voice message from an Orange cancellation rep. Apparently, they “just” need us to go into the Orange store where we purchased our phones (yes, the specific stores) and return the units. Upon handing in the phones we’ve now spent $450 each on, not counting monthly service fees of course, our accounts will be cancelled. All this after Jess and I were told, separately, on multiple non-consecutive occasions, that cancelling our service and unlocking our phone to take the abroad would be “no problem.”

Needless to say, I’m super displeased with Orange right now. However, this frustration does not compare with the prospects of again attempting to reach Orange’s customer support reps to set all of this straight.

Des Voleurs, Degagez-Vous

To start with a painfully clichéd phrase, “Today is the first day of the rest of my life”—because yesterday my entire post-adolescent life was robbed. Literally. Some asshole broke into my apartment and stole my laptop, which contains all my writing (and I’m not just talking blog posts, but articles, freelance copywriting, college and post-grad papers, original poetry), all the curriculum I’ve developed as a teacher (lesson plans, projects, notes, research), tons of emails, and a host of other important documents and information. Namely, I’ve lost my entire body of work to date, the groundwork for future work, and things I can’t even begin to recall. All gone. Game over.

It all begins with the living room window, with which N and I have fought an oftentimes losing battle for the past year. It’s extremely difficult to shut firmly, and doing so requires a team of at least two to three people. Sometimes it pops open after it’s been firmly (or semi-firmly) shut. To my knowledge, it was shut when I left the apartment yesterday morning, but one never truly knows.

Then there’s the scaffolding that’s lining both sides of my apartment building, as the property manager is finally renovating the facades after a 20 year lapse. For the past two months, there has been a team workers entering and exiting my building complex, working directly beside my apartment, waking me up with horrible banging and drilling, dusting up the stairwell—a constant nuisance, not to mention something that’s made me slightly uneasy. Who likes having lots of strangers hanging around near their home for a prolonged period?

You can probably put two and two together at this point. I came home yesterday from a full workday followed by gym workout (still in my sweaty workout clothes) to find that the window that I’d thought had been shut and the curtains that had most certainly been fully closed were open above a pile of dust on the cushions and carpet. I immediately knew my laptop was gone before I even looked toward its usual spot on my desk. Sure enough, gone it was, and it was the only thing taken. There were several other small, valuable items the culprit could have pinched, but a shiny white iBook seemed to do the trick. Plus, the thief needed a getaway bag so he dumped all the contents of my deskside trash and took the plastic garbage bag. Gee, thanks.

After feverishly checking and rechecking that nothing else had been taken, I called N, who as luck wouldn’t have it is away on business in the States, and he tried to talk me down. Everything that occurred afterwards was surreal and almost comical. I went downstairs to tell my super, and to enlist his help in calling the police, as my robbery-addled brain wasn’t operating at normal capacity and my French was coming out painfully wrong . He, his wife, and their daughter were very sympathetic and sweet and helped me without hesitation. The teenage daughter dialed the cops and what ensued was a family sitcom scenario of her speaking on the phone, the mom continuously yelling at her to ask for their exact address and Metro stop, and the dad continuously yelling at the mom to stop yelling at their kid. This went on for several minutes and at one point I did let out a little giggle that I had to stifle with a cough. Ahem. We determined that I would walk to the police station and in the meantime the super and his wife would alert my downstairs neighbor, who was a victim of the same crime exactly a week before (unbelievable, right?). They told me Mme G could give me useful information on how to proceed. Cool.

My mind was then racing with the multitude of things I had to immediately do: get the damn window shut, go to the police station, of course shower because in France walking around in one’s sweaty gym clothes automatically lowers one’s credibility, and uh oh, my friends visiting from SF (who thank goodness were spending the night) were due chez moi in two hours so I’d have to leave a note on my door instructing them to wait at the café downstairs while I tended to the emergency. I decided to tackle the window first, unaided (big mistake) and was getting so worked up emotionally that I absentmindedly placed one hand on a pane of glass in the window while putting pressure on the frame in order to get it closed. The next thing I knew, my hand had gone straight through the glass, without even so much as a crashing sound effect. Pffff, pop! was all I got. (This is so like me. I am the most closeted clumsy person in the world. I appear to have it all together, but every now and again I have a really bizarre or just plain foolish mishap—usually none involve injuring myself, though.) Don’t worry, I was super, super lucky to only sustain some shallow cuts on my hand, but at the time I was bleeding and in shock and so I just lost it. Explosions. Nuclear meltdowns. Call in the haz-mat crew, a.k.a. my beloved N, who could barely make out what I was saying, I was in such hysterics. He was attempting to talk me down yet again, when suddenly the doorbell rang. And this is when Mme G, the downstairs neighbor whose laptops were stolen last week, entered the picture and the fires started to get put out.

I first put her on the phone with N, because my French was becoming more and more second-grader by the moment. They exchanged stories. Hers was even worse! The workers had broken one of her windows in the course of their work and offered to help patch it up with cardboard. Two of them actually went into her apartment to apply the temporary fix. About a few days later, she left her apartment for two hours, only to return to the cardboard slashed, the window open, two computers gone, and a trail of dusty footprints leading to her front door (which is so cartoonish it’s almost funny…well, really, it’s just horrible).

Anyhow, I eventually said goodbye to N. Mme G took one look at my haggard expression and knew she had to take charge of the situation. And she did so in the kindest, most gracious way. We agreed I should wait until the next morning to go to the police given the additional fracas with the glass and my hand, plus the simple logic that it could wait until tomorrow. She called my household insurance company; she called the police. Finally, she insisted that she accompany me to the police station the following morning and gave me her numbers in case I needed anything.

Then more neighbors started showing up to express their sympathies and concerns. (Wow, news spreads fast in this building.) One neighbor and the super helped me finally get the window very firmly shut. I patched up the hole in the glass with cardboard and packing tape. Once the excitement died down, I was able to take a long shower and reflect. Yes, this is a terrible loss of something priceless. Yes, whoever did this is a real MF and has left me feeling violated and unsafe in my own home. Yes, I am such an idiot for not backing up my data despite knowing better, yet being too lazy to deal (believe me, I will probably beat myself up over this one for a long time to come). But really, despite all the negativity generated from this incident, I have to look on the bright side, because I’m a stereotypical positive American, dammit, and that’s how we do. So: I’ve learned an important lesson (always back up! wasn’t this a Sex and the City episode?), and now I have a fresh start. Tabula rasa. I will have to keep telling myself that when the sadness and anger seesaw back into play.

To help put things into perspective, I decided to read the news. Hurricane Hanna, Iraq, and Sarah Palin…yeah, my problems are pretty small. I eventually received my wonderful friends, whose presence calmed me down immensely—to the point that they were marveling at how calm I seemed (you should’ve seen me a couple hours ago, friends)—and in no time I was laughing and having a fun evening. As an extra precaution, they also helped me move the sofa in front of the windows, in effect blocking the windows from being opened. I don't like having a hole in the glass with scaffolding adjacent to my apartment, but moving the sofa made me feel better and I don’t think the jerk who broke in would be so bold as to attempt it again. (I’ll get a real glass replacement on Monday, anyhow.)

I had a semi-sleepless night, in part because I kept hearing fishy noises on the scaffolding outside my bedroom window. Paranoia started to get the better of me. (It’s him/them, he’s/they’re back with a crew of thieves and they’re going to clean the place out. Must…protect…Rock Band gear and Goonies DVD! Haha, just kidding.) Finally I worked up the nerve to take a peek. Pfew! Just a tarp attached to the scaffolding twisting and rasping in the wind. Girl, you’ve seen way too many scary movies.

My neighbor accompanied me to the police station this morning and I filed the report. It was a fairly painless procedure—I didn't need 14 documents, the police were nice, I managed fairly well with my French, and my neighbor picked up the slack when I couldn't. Then the police sent over a "police technique" (forensics) person, who arrived with his smart-looking forensics briefcase. I was expecting a little CSI action—dusting for fingerprints or at least some inspection of the premises—but he only asked me the same questions they did at the station, wrote down the same information I’d reported at the station, and explained there was nothing more he could do. DUUUUUUUUUUUH. Um, why did you come in the first place? (Ah, France. Such a high unemployment rate and therefore some pretty pointless jobs.) He did share one bit of interesting info: He said the police gets tons of these reports any time there's travaux (renovations) done on a building. In a way that makes me feel better, but in a way it’s even more infuriating.

Mme G and I returned to our building only to learn from the super that there had been a third incident, this time in the building across from mine. The workers have been painting and so an elderly resident left the windows open to air out the apartment, only to return home to find one of the workers standing in the apartment. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!! The resident is scared to report it to the cops in case the worker threatens or hurts him. Three incidents in one week? That’s it, these guys have to be fired. My downstairs neighbor, my landlord, and my super are all pressuring the building manager to crack some heads at the contractor’s. As the French would say, c’est insupportable.

Later, I went to the gym to channel my aggression and focus on something else. Pumping iron really works! I felt good and strong and sweaty and alive. Some comforting phone calls with family members, delicious white tea, and a hot shower later, I’ve managed to put a lot of the negativity behind me and I’m awaiting yet another set of visiting friends. (I’m quite grateful to not be spending the weekend alone in my apartment given the circumstances.) Moreover, I’ve returned to one of the most relaxing exercises I know: writing. I am rebuilding the temple, so to speak. So thank you for sticking it through this super long account; it’s been an important cathartic step.

Working Out, or Working It?

You’ve heard it before: Parisian women are the height of style. After a year of living among les Parisiennes, I’m not convinced that it’s a universal truth, but I give them major bonus points for experimenting with fashion. Even if they miss the mark, they’re worlds more daring, fashion-wise, than the Anglos. I can also now attest that this adventurousness extends into the realm of gym wardrobes, as well, but I’m not as generous with doling out the bonus points in this case.

After reading the fabulous Stuff Parisians Like’s claim that Parisians consider exercise anathema (“for people who are either stupid or gay”), I have to respectfully disagree. My gym is always packed and yeah, there are lots of lollygaggers, but also a lot of hardcore exercisers who treat some of the gym classes like cult gatherings. However, I think the one thing Parisians are intrinsically adverse to is the unmentionable sin of appearing unkempt or...gasp...dull. Even after schvitzing it up on the Stairmaster for 40 minutes. I’ve mentioned before that it’s unheard of to walk around in gym clothes in public. But things get a bit out of hand within the protective walls of the gym, too. Some of the getups are not to be believed.

There’s a woman about twice my age who seems to have time traveled into Jane Fonda’s workout closet from 1983 (or just never bought a new workout outfit since then). She consistently wears a neon pink leotard with black leggings, a hot pink sweatband around her head with wristbands to match, and always, without fail, sports her gold necklace and diamond earrings.

Then there are the younger chicks. One girl wears 1970’s roller-skating rink red shorts with white piping and a barely-there red halter top to match. On her feet are gleamingly white sneakers. Left foot: no sock. Right foot: black sock pulled up to mid-shin length. I’ve puzzled over what the reasons could be for covering her lower right leg. Embarrassing lovelorn tattoo of Sarkozy? Fungal infection of the ankle? Flashing colors to the Right Bank Crips? All are possible if not extremely farfetched explanations, but then why no left sock? I’m stumped, people.

Another girl dresses like she’s ready for a set of tennis in a bygone decade when women first discovered the wonders of exposing their legs for sporting activities. She wears a short-sleeved sweater, very short madras shorts, and thigh-high sheer stockings, the lacy tops of which aren’t even covered by the shorts hems. It’s just…bizarre. Is she afraid of getting her legs dirty? Is she too lazy to change out of the pantyhose she’s been wearing under a skirt during the workday? Pantyhose are really never a good idea. As a Parisienne, she should know better.

The worst offender is a woman in her 40’s who is like Pat Benatar on a fashion bender. She seems to alternate between two ensembles. One is a black thong leotard with the torso cut out, leaving a gaping hole that reveals a neon green bandeau top. The other is a red thong leotard that covers her entire torso, thank goodness. Both outfits are worn with fishnets and color-coordinated legwarmers and high-top sneakers—not to mention the fringed arm-band. She has super-straight jet-black hair with severe bangs and looks like she’s been tanning or smoking or both for too many years. Frankly, she terrifies me.

I’ve so far neglected the men’s fashions because they’re generally beyond reproach, except for one troubling guy who always wears a long, very baggy, low-cut tank top with tiny little shorts. Aside from the fact that it sometimes looks like he's not wearing anything on the bottom, do we need to always see his man-cleavage?

Maybe I’m just a simple-minded American, but the gym is where I go to work out, sweat a lot, and therefore not preoccupy myself with clothes. Standard stretchy exercise pants topped off with a plain tee or tank always suffices. Dressed like that, am I going to win any fashion awards? Of course not. But is my outfit 100% functional? Yessir. And will I ever be accused of shopping for gym outfits at a vintage costume shop or at Burning Man? Hells no.

The Wonderful World of French Food Shopping

Purchasing power. A recent study reported that it’s the number one concern among French consumers. My students frequently alternate between grumbling and fretting over it. Even advertisers have taken note, as a recent LastMinute.com billboard in the Métro boasted you could provide your family with a vacance “bling-bling” while still protecting your pouvoir d’achat.

The issue is most deeply felt in the area of food prices, a global crisis that shows no sign of letting up. Yet while the French population worries about the soaring cost of a kilo of apples, it also wants desperately to hold onto one of the oldest and dearest of French values—product quality. France has a long, long tradition of farming and people take the terroir very seriously. Each region is known for its agricultural specialties, and only the best producers boast the appellation d’origine contrôlée (or AOC) seal of approval, a government certification that the products (such as wine, dairy goods, produce) are indeed grown or made in said region. It’s a stamp of authority that the California avocado farmers could only dream of, and that New York apple-growers should seriously pursue for Macintoshes. (The fact that I think these are the best apples in the world is probably proof that I’ll always be a New Yorker at heart).

This meticulous attention to quality is reflected in the way one can shop for food. The French government has (of course) generated some laws that protect smaller businesses, limit competition, and therefore prevent prices from dropping. But is this completely a bad thing? Let’s take a deeper look in the shopping cart.

In France, you can shop at a large, chain supermarket. There you can find a wide variety of products, but not necessarily at reduced prices. Due to some bizarre law, chain markets are able to charge different prices for the same products depending where the store is located. Therefore, the same box of cereal can cost two euros more at a Monoprix in the tony 16th arrondisement than in the grittier, bohemian Belleville district. The supermarket offers the convenience of one-stop shopping, but depending on where you live, doesn’t necessarily offer savings.

You can turn to the hypermarkets if you want to shave off pennies, but those are few and far between. France has tried to restrict expansion as much as possible in order to protect small, independent businesses and avoid going the way of fiercely competitive capitalist markets. There are indeed zoning laws that prohibit more than one hypermarket within a wide geographic area, and even more laws that prevent more than one large supermarket from opening within a certain range.

This may seem strange to American consumers, yet there’s something to it. First of all, you may be able to pick up much-needed non-perishable items and household products at a supermarket or hypermarket, but the perishables aren’t necessarily of the highest quality. Second of all, there’s something sterile and uninviting about strolling the fluorescent-lit aisles of a grocery store, where employees are impassive and don’t know a whole lot about the products they’re peddling.

A much richer experience awaits shoppers in the small commercial areas of their quartiers,, a tradition that has been rendered extinct in the strip-mall-thatched expanses of America. Picking up groceries can sometimes be a chore, but I often look forward to it in my neighborhood. First, I stop at the small open-air marché where I select from a gorgeous display of produce—and most of it isn’t imported. Plus, it’s better than anything I’ve ever found in the States, even at Whole Foods (maybe just with the exception of my all-time favorite, California heirloom tomatoes). I regularly eat fruit from the market that really epitomizes the way fruits should taste. When’s the last time I savored berries or peaches of that quality back in the States? Too often in the U.S. you get produce that looks fantastic, only to have a mealy or diluted, watery taste. What also makes my shopping experience at my local petit marché so pleasant is the friendly greengrocer and his son who greet me with smiles and small talk every time.

On special occasions, I can also hit up the large outdoor markets, which tend to have lots more selection at slightly lower prices and aren’t nearly as bobo as U.S. farmer’s markets. However, I have to be lucky enough to have time in my schedule to visit these markets, as they’re often on weekday mornings and severely crowded on weekends.

Next, I’m off to the butcher. This is a relatively new experience for me, as I never shopped at a butcher in San Francisco. The miracle that is Trader Joe’s offered high-quality free range, organic poultry and meat at reasonable prices and so I usually bought my proteins there. At first, I bought meat at the supermarkets, but a recent scare (it came to light that at cheaper groceries they were repackaging nearly-expired meats to look fresher and giving them new expiration dates) made me a bit paranoid. So, I conceded to pay a bit extra to ensure that I was getting safe, quality meat. I couldn’t be more satisfied. The meat not only tastes fantastic, but there’s always such a huge variety of cuts to choose from. I still don’t dare venture into offal territory, but I could if I wanted to—it’s all proudly laid out in the display case. My butchers happily offer to butterfly chicken filets and pound them into thin breasts, cut up beef into cubes for a stew, or explain the best method for cooking certain cuts of lamb. The purveyors are also extremely smiley and gregarious, a quality which many French shopkeepers seem to lack.

Finally, I stop at the bakery. It goes without saying that French bakeries are proof of the divine. How else could something smell and taste so good? American bread—even when baked fresh on the premises with lots of love and care—doesn’t even come close. Not only is it a simple pleasure to pick up a fresh tradition or pain cereals, but it’s also (by French standards) cheap! Amen to that. There are tons of tiny boulangeries scattered throughout the city, with no zoning laws to restrict the reach of their delicious output.

While those are my top three food-shopping spots, I have many more artisinal, specialty shops to choose from: the fishmonger, the wine shop, the charcuterie (French equivalent of deli), the dedicated poultry vendor (complete with the always-spinning rotisserie), the chocolatier, and the cheese shop. At the latter, you can spend as much time as you want asking the shopkeepers about their endless varieties of fromage and they will never bat an eyelash. (This is in ironic contrast to the surly service we—and everyone else, for that matter—always received at Say Cheese on San Francisco’s Cole Street. It seems the shopkeepers there have swapped typical cultural roles with the upbeat cheesemongers on our current shopping street.)

Although I pay a bit extra for the privilege of filling my fridge with the bounty of the small, independently-run shops, it’s only marginally more than what I’d pay at the supermarket—and the quality is far better, from the perspective of what goes on my plate and my overall shopping experience. I’m with the French government on this one.

The Art(lessness) of the Gaze

The French love to stare. And they’re not subtle or coy about it at all. They never aim a ginger look out of the corner of their eyes and then quickly turn away when the object of their gaze looks in their direction. Oh, no. Rather, they’ve perfected the habit of full-on, without-a-doubt, shameless staring right at you. This lack of discretion seems odd and more than a little bit nosy, because where I come from, staring is rude and something best remained hidden; on the other hand, there’s something so honest about unabashed staring—“yeah, I’m lookin’ at you”—that gets lost in the tangled web of American social niceties.

It used to bother me, because I’m often the target of stares. As an outsider, I tend to do certain quotidian things just differently enough to merit curiosity. After a while, though, I got used to the staring and decided to turn it around by defiantly staring right back, as if to say, “You lookin’ at me? What? WHAT?” Such a gesture would certain make most American starers back down, but the French usually keep staring. They cannot be deflected. Are they robots? Sigh. It at least makes me feel a bit better to (somewhat) take charge of my objectification.

Anyways, I’ve been able to determine a pattern to the long, uninterrupted gaze of the French:

1) Be a tourist. Well, I don’t fall into this category, but I’ve seen people stare at tourists like their lives depend on it. I suppose foreigners hold a certain universal curiosity, but come on, this is Paris, a large, international city—not some hick country town in the middle of nowhere. Just yesterday, a family of German tourists got on the RER. The dad was filming their entrance to the train, which admittedly was a tad stare-worthy because who needs to capture getting on the RER Ligne A, aka the oven of B.O., sweat, and suffocation? Anyhow, the guy turned off his camera once his troupe was safely on board and the family proceeded to talk quietly amongst themselves. I noticed nearly everyone on the train continue to stare at them for the next few minutes. Sorry, but they were not even remotely fascinating.

2) Speak a foreign language. This may have had something to do with the example above. Any time I’ve spoken English in public, I’ve almost invariably gotten stared at, especially on public transportation. I don’t like to speak on my mobile on public trans, but sometimes it happens, and I feel a lot less self-conscious doing it here because a) everyone else does it, and b) not everyone understands me. However, they stare at me anyway. It’s worse if you’re speaking to someone on the train in English, as you become the focus of attention. Big whoop! If I’m reading anything English, I also get stared at. Maybe the people are trying to test their English skills—that’s the only good reason I can come up with for why people feel the need to actually peek at the text in the book, essentially reading (or just staring?) over my shoulder. Yes, Philip Roth is that compelling.

3) Eat on public transportation. I don’t do this often, because let’s face it, it’s not ideal. However, I’m forced to do so once a week, when I have from noon to half past to get from one client in the center of town to the next client at La Défense on the western outskirts. It’s tight, but doable—just as long as I eat lunch on the RER. Everyone in my vicinity stares at me almost the entire time I’m eating. I’d understand it if I was a boorish, slobby eater with baguette crumbs all over my clothes, but I usually have a fairly neatly packaged salad or non-crumbly sandwich, keeping myself and the train car floor squeaky clean. I still can’t tell if the staring is due to people thinking I’m crude regardless, or to people being jealous. In case of the latter, I throw in a few satisfied, this-is-so-yummy looks.

4) Carry or drink out of a large water bottle. I’ve written about this issue before. The French cannot comprehend drinking out of a container that is bigger than a juice glass or small water bottle. Unfortunately, I discovered that my Nalgene was made out of a chemical-leaking plastic (eek), so I discarded it and have since been shelling out the big bucks for disposable plastic bottles for when I’m on the go. However, I tend to go for one- or two-liter bottles so I don’t have to constantly refill. Whether I’m sipping or simply toting such a gargantuan bottle, I get stared at on the street, on the train, in lunch spots—nothing to see here, just staying hydrated.

5) Wear gym clothes on the street. For prolonged staring, wear gym clothes on the street after you have worked out. For X-Ray strength staring, do the latter while really, really sweaty and running various errands. Now, I’m not in danger of running into diplomats or other VIPs while doing so, and I admit it’s not my finest-looking hour, but I refuse to shower and primp at the gym (like 98% of Parisian gym members) when I live only a seven-minute walk away. And if I need to pick up milk and veggies on my way home, I will do so in full gym regalia. Sweat included. So be it.

Conveniently, the one time Parisians don’t stare at you is when they’re trying to board a Métro or RER train. This is the one time when you become completely invisible to them, so much so that they practically walk right through you—or into you, as it were. And there are two occasions when Parisians don’t stare at each other, but can become the object of my gaze:

• Excessive making out in public. Anyone who’s been to Paris has seen a young couple all unabashedly hot and heavy in public. What’s funny is that they seem to choose the most visible spots in which to do so. I’ve seen: people sucking face right after the turnstiles to get into the Métro, on crowded Métro cars within inches of someone else’s head, nearly dry-humping on park benches, and against building walls on busy street corners. I’d rather not be a voyeur of all the hardcore PDA, but the openness of these acts (you’re not in Puritan America anymore!) tends to catch my attention for at least a couple seconds. Then I laugh to myself and look away.

• Vociferous complaining. This is pretty much a national sport in France. People love to sigh, cluck their tongues, “oh la la” miserably, or rant—loudly—over the most trivial mishaps. Is the five-minute delay on the train so horrible that you need to rattle off a thesis about the ills of RATP? Is the rain really such a menace to society that you have to gasp like you just saw the Four Riders of the Apocalypse? When N and I were at Orly airport, on our way to Barcelona, the airline reps announced that we would have to walk down one flight of stairs to a new gate. A middle-aged woman in front of us cried out, “Oh la la la la la la la la la la, on descend” (translation: oh crap, we’re going downstairs) with such bitterness, agony, and injustice that N and I burst out laughing. The woman’s teenage daughter noticed, which only made us giggle louder. The French may stare at me, but every now and again they give me good reason to ogle them, with hilarious results.

...in the Summer, When It Sizzles

Now that it’s summer (or some approximation of it, given the inconsistent weather we’ve been having), I’ve realized there’s one thing I kind of miss: air conditioning. It’s taken me by surprise. After all, I don’t live in a sweltering, smog-infused metropolis near the equator, nor a steamy jungle—but I have to say that sometimes Paris can feel like either one. By general rule, there’s no A/C in many homes, office buildings, shops, restaurants, and certainly not on the Métro and RER, neither on the platform nor on the train cars themselves. Summer temperatures can be akin to those in the Northeast U.S., but even on days in the low 70's, navigating all of the above locations can turn me into a hot, wilted mess.

The Métro and RER can be fairly bearable on a hot day at off-peak hours. It’s not cool on the trains, by any stretch, but it doesn’t feel like you’ve entered a boiler room—unless you’re riding during rush hour. All that densely packed commuter flesh can really raise the temperature quite a bit. The RER Line A, which I use four days a week, is a friggin’ oven. I get on the train feeling just fine, but after being wedged on it like a sausage for only eight stationary minutes, I’m sweating.

Once I’m outside, even if it’s hot out, the fresh air and light breeze are welcome sources of relief. But that all ends when I reach a client’s office building. Those of you who live in hot places with abundant A/C know the near-orgasmic pleasure of walking into a frigid lobby after trekking around in the muggy outdoors. Here in Paris, the sensation of walking into an uncooled lobby is the exact opposite. The heat hits you like a ton of bricks. At larger, more modern buildings, like the 37-story tower where I have several clients, the situation improves once you go upstairs. There must be some light A/C in the halls because they just feel cooler, and each meeting room has heat and A/C controls. (Getting a French person to agree to turning on the A/C is another story. More on that below.)

However, if you suffer the misfortune of working in a smaller, older building (the norm in Paris), you are screwed. My company’s office building doesn’t have the infrastructure for A/C, reducing our top-story office to a veritable furnace. The hottest spot within is the teachers’ room, which houses the copying machine (in other words, the device we need to use the most), which emanates radioactive levels of heat.

It can be just as bad in the shops, too. On one particularly hot day, I was thirsty and on my way to a client, and couldn’t find a little grocery, so I stopped at a Monoprix (higher-price supermarket chain) to buy a cold drink. Walking inside was like suddenly being transported to Mumbai: over 90 degrees and air so humid you could slice it with a butter knife, which is never a good sign indoors. How can the fanciest supermarket in Paris not have A/C? At this rate, I’d have to buy two drinks—one just to hydrate me enough to make it out of the store.

Although many restos don’t have air-con, they very often have one magic ingredient: la terrasse. And if you aren’t lucky enough to snag a seat there, the doors and windows are always open, creating some soothing cross-ventilation inside. The same can be done at home, where we also have fans to get us through what could be too-warm, sleepless nights.

My aversion to the lack of A/C deems me a freak. The French are nearly always cold. I don’t know what in their genetic disposition makes them so sensitive to cold temperatures; Paris is on the same longitude as Vancouver, for crying out loud. C’est bizarre--and also, kind of hysterical. I’ll be on the boiling-hot RER during rush hour, perspiring in short sleeves and a skirt, and women will be sporting light sweaters while men will be keeping on the jackets of their wool-blended suits. I’ve entered relatively cool conference rooms at my students’ buildings, smiling in relief, only to have my dreams shattered by the eternal complaint, “Ah, il fait froid! Oh la la la la, la climatisation est la merde.” Then my student will invariably fiddle with the A/C control panel, gasping in horror at the temperature reading of 20 degrees (that’s roughly 72 F). I’ve had to talk students down from cranking it up to 26 C (approx. 84 F). Just the other night at a restaurant (which had a perfect room temperature), N and I noticed two parties ask to change their table “because of the draft.” Ha! Now you know why the French all wear scarves: to protect their delicate, draft-endangered necks.

I used to be like them, kind of. I always used to get cold back in the States. An SF summer was a time to bust out the fleece, not turn up the air-con. At a summer job in NYC I used to wear a sweater in the office because it was freezing due to full-blast A/C. Geography didn't even really have much to do with it--I always had temperature wars with students in my never-quite-right classroom and also at home with my husband, who would be perfectly happy if it never went above 73 degrees, anywhere. How things have changed. Well, it may be more energy efficient in France, but they could maybe spread the love...just a little bit? I mean, this is the country where thousands of senior citizens died in an unprecedented August heatstroke five years back (a big part of the problem, aside from lack of A/C, was that almost the entire country was on vacation).

When I visit NYC this summer, I know it’ll probably hot as Hades—but at least on the subway, there will be air-conditioning.

A Shift in the Force

When I first moved here, I was awash in a rainstorm of illogic. The catch-22 of needing a lease to open a bank account but also not being able to sign a lease without one was just mind-boggling. Only being able to complete certain banking transactions with my particular account manager never failed to amaze. People’s tendency to act impatiently (cutting lines, aggressively hopping onto train cars) was in sharp contrast to their tendency to be completely dazed and oblivious (stopping short right in front of you on the street and not considerately moving out of the way…and then getting mad if you at all bumped into them). None of it made any sense! At the time, when I expressed my confusion and frustration, my American friend who’d been living in Paris for over six years said, “See, that’s your mistake: looking for logic where there isn’t any!”

During the months that followed, I experienced more than my fair share of the small paradoxes of French life. Over time, my friend’s advice started to sink in. And lately, I seem to be crossing a threshold. The illogical things that used to completely blow my mind have by now become so commonplace that they’re expected rather than a cause for surprise.

Take yesterday, for example. I went to deposit some cash at the bank and was told that that particular type of transaction would no longer be possible with a teller. Apparently after an inexplicable “transition period,” customers have to stop depositing with tellers and use the ATMs. No matter that I had done it a few weeks before and every month since August. You may recall how much my bank is despised in my household (see: here, here, and also here). This would have put me over the edge even a season ago. However, I have no idea what the “transition period” means, how long it is, or whom it applies to, because I didn’t even think to ask. I just took the absurdity of the situation in stride, shrugged my shoulders, and thought, It figures. Next.

Then there was my reaction to yesterday’s impromptu RER strike. Usually transportation strikes must be preceded by two weeks’ advance notice, but the workers took matters into their own hands in protest of one of their own getting attacked. Monday night, an off-duty conductor was on his way to work in the RER station when some young hooligans asked him for a cigarette. When he said he didn’t have any, they harassed him to the point of physically aggressing him. The poor man wound up in the hospital. That’s just awful.

But what did the RER Line A workers do? They went on strike, inconveniencing a whole lot of people (the line has the highest passenger volume in all of Paris and its suburbs). Public transport commute times were quadrupled in length; the news reported a total of 400 km of traffic trying to get into Paris. Is the state, or the community for that matter, responsible for the actions of a few young asshats?

Months ago, this kind of thing would have send me onto a sarcastic, seething downward spiral about the irrationality and misplaced actions and blah blah blah. But no, I shrugged and like every single French person does in the face of ludicrousness, said apathetically, “C’est normal. C’est la France.”

Post-Script: I just got home from having drinks and heard yet another tale that got barely a raised eyebrow out of me. An acquaintance had dinner at a Parisian restaurant and she wanted to have two starters instead of a starter and a main dish. The restaurant refused her request. Of course, service is notoriously brusque here, but that just takes the cake. Me, I just smirked and muttered, "Typical, typical..." I think this new phase of assimilation is making me as cynical as the French.

Serenity, No

I had two experiences this week that were supposed to bring a bit more tranquility to my fast-paced, jet-setting, ultra-urban life (ha ha), but left me feeling a bit deflated and more than a bit cheated.

France may be more expensive these days due to the low value of the dollar against the euro, but some things are just plain cher. Sodas at restaurants shockingly cost over 4 euros. Apparently McDonald’s is in a higher price bracket than in the States, even without the conversion rate. The price of gas is clearly a global crisis, but to put things into perspective, in France it costs roughly double the price in America (when taking the conversion rate into account). And as if those things weren’t enough, we can now add mani-pedi’s to the list of Egregiously Expensive Things.

I’ve been wanting to get a pedicure for months, but I’ve been told by many a femme how pricey they are here – over 30 euros. That’s crazy. I’ve never paid more than $15 for a pedicure, even at a relatively nice nail salon. The other day when I was walking around the Opera district, from one client’s office to another’s, I was utterly delighted to come across a nail salon that boasted a 15 euro beauté de pieds on the price list hanging in the shop window. I couldn’t believe my good fortune to have found the one good deal in town! What suckers all those other ladies must be, paying over 30 euros for a pedi. Ha! I poked my head into the place and quickly asked if the listed price of 15 was indeed for a pedicure. Getting an affirmative response, I dashed out to make it to my client on time and resolved to return later that afternoon.

I did just that, got a lovely pedicure, and was super relaxed from this rare moment of pampering. But then it was time to pay. “Quinze euro, c’est ça?” I asked at the register. “Ah, non, madame, ça fait quarante six.” Cue the Bernard Herrmann screeching violins. My jaw dropped. “Comment?” I said, to clarify that I had indeed heard her say 46 and I wasn’t imagining it. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a hallucination. She then went on to explain that because I don’t have a membership at the nail salon, the cost of a pedicure for us peons is actually 36 euros. Plus, getting your toes painted with polish costs another 10 euros. OH.MY.GOD. I have entered the fifth dimension. And apparently the laugh’s on me--who’s the sucker now?

But wait--I received some fishy information. I had, after all, been told that the price was 15. Although I rushed out right after getting this information, the employee, at the time, had pulled the oldest page in the book of French illogical behavior: don’t give any more information than what someone has asked for. As I didn’t think of the remote (and, quite frankly, ridiculous) possibility that there was member and non-member pricing, I didn’t ask about it, and therefore, she didn’t consider telling me. (Believe me, this is typical and part of it is because the French don’t want to insult your intelligence by giving you information you may already know; the other part of it is, as I’ve indicated in the past, many of them just can’t be bothered to “draw outside the lines.” But I digress.) If I had known the true cost, I would've never come back and spent nearly two hours of my life gearing up for the priciest pedi imaginable.

In situations like these, when you have been clearly misled or swindled, it’s time to put on your game face and aggressively pursue some consumer justice. Many expat friends who’ve lived here much longer than I have advised that if such situations arise, and if you don’t have the French vocabulary to voice your grievance, just start going off in English. Loudly. With a vengeance. That’s what I should’ve done, but a) I was so shocked at the reality unfolding before me, b) I was exhausted from a super long day of teaching and couldn’t muster the energy to go ballistic, and c) inconveniently forgot the English tirade advice and instead used my meager French. Big mistake. Without the requisite amount of righteous anger and accurate language, I was no match for the manicure mafia—all seven employees got super defensive and claimed that blah blah blah blah blah. There was some back and forth, and in the end all I got was a discount for a future pedi. Big friggin’ whoop. I stormed out of the place, livid at them for their chicanery and absurd price points and at myself for not putting up more of a fight (how do you say 'pushover' in French?). If there’s a next time, WATCH OUT. At least my toes look fabulous.

The next day, I decided to finally check out the yoga class offered at my gym. In truth, I had low expectations to begin with. I assumed there would be no chanting in Hindi, no meditation, no “Namaste”-ing. Fine. I assumed the type of crowd to attend a yoga class at a gym would be nowhere near the level of hardcore practitioners I was familiar with in my past yoga days. Fine. So it wouldn’t be the warm, fuzzy, SF-style yoga group hug I was used to, but then again I hadn’t done yoga regularly for years and I was happy just to run through the poses and get back into it.

I was right about the lack of spirituality. The teacher went straight into breathing and sun salutations. Not a whisper of Hindi was spoken. He didn’t guide us through the final relaxation exercise; we just kind of lay there. Throughout the hour, you could hear the soft thumping of the cheesey techno music coming from the main exercise room adjacent to the studio (good luck trying to completely relax yourself!). I found that I missed all the regular spiritual trappings of a yoga class, but, fine, whatever, I could do without it this time. Just happy to be doing yoga at all. However, as I was really rusty, I really would’ve appreciated some support from the teacher. He did nothing but talk us through the poses and model them somewhat. He walked around the room but not once did he ever adjust anyone’s warrior pose or assist people to get into a shoulder stand. I’d made lots of assumptions about what this class would be missing, but the one thing I had thought for sure was that the teacher would do what I consider to be the bare minimum of teaching—that is, to help the students! Guess not. I didn’t feel as bilked as I had at the nail place, but I felt cheated in a different way. Even though it had some positive physical results, it was the most soulless, uneducational yoga class ever. At least I was semi-prepared for the possibility.

The real punch line came at the very end of the class, after we’d climbed out of our pseudo-meditative corpse poses and started gathering our things. The teacher turned to one of the students (probably a regular) and in his best kvetchy tone, started whining about how annoyed he was with his job and how much he had to work (OK, ‘soulless’ really is the mantra at this yoga class). And his anti-work comment was an amusing reminder that not only am I at a yoga class at a gym, but I’m at a yoga class at a gym in France.

How May We Not Help You?

It’s been a long while since this blog featured an irate rant against the French banking system. This is largely due to the fact that after 7 months, we’ve grown accustomed to the inconveniences. But today I was fortunate to taste yet another flavor in the rich palate of customer non-service. Mmmmmm, exasperating banking.

I went to the bank to perform a fairly cut-and-dry task: deposit cash. When I arrived, there was a small line yet only one teller was serving customers. He went down the line, asking what we wished to do (deposit cash, deposit checks, etc), and one by one we were told that he couldn’t help us with our tasks; his colleague would have to do so. By the time he was finished, the line had grown to six people – all of whom had been turned down. Um, isn’t this a fucking bank? What do you mean you can’t help us with deposits?!

What was even more infuriating was that there were six bank employees behind the counter, performing all manner of tasks yet not one of them glanced in the direction of the line of customers waiting for their aid. This continued for…wait for it…20 minutes! So let’s review the math: six employees, six customers, 20 minutes of waiting. WTF?

We didn’t go down without a fight. Aside from the dirty looks, exasperated sighs, tapping feet, and grumbling, some of us actually dared question their nonchalance. The woman behind me called out to them, asking if it wasn’t possible for just one of them to help us. ‘No, no,’ they replied, ‘we’re very busy.’ Right. So busy that you’re willing to ignore a line of irritated customers?

Then – the icing on the cake – when two tellers finally started accepting customers, the guy at the very back of the line didn’t wait for us to get served in turn. He cut around to the teller on the side of the line, before any of us noticed – we were laser-focused on the teller directly in front of us. When we discovered this appalling (yet entirely normal in these parts) infraction, the woman at the end of the line loudly complained to the teller, who replied that it was perfectly fair because the man had been here a while before, but got impatient waiting, left, and then came back. Therefore, he was entitled to cut the line. Ohhhhhhhhhh, that seems fair. Do we have SUCKER brandished across our foreheads? Guess so. Well in that case, go right ahead and continue inconveniencing your customers. Gah!

This is one thing that after 30+ years of life in the States, I’ll never, ever get used to.

(Barely) Legal

Today I achieved a major milestone in my short life in France – after amassing every official document known to man, waiting on insane lines, dealing with nasty public employees and vague instructions, and making several trips to government buildings, I finally got my legal residency card. Woohoo!

The latest adventure brought me to the foreigner “installation” services agency, not far from where I live. I arrived early, to find a substantial crowd already waiting outside the agency’s doors, which wouldn’t open until the appointed time of 8:30. There are many people from Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, a sizable amount from Eastern Europe, and then a smattering of Anglos. I only overhear English once. The agenda for this visit was simple: watch a short film about life in France, have an interview with a social assistant, have a quick medical consultation, and then finish my paperwork. It only took four hours, but at least I was warned.

The film was in French, naturally. I was offered a written translation into English, which I accepted but then didn’t need to consult – the narration was slow enough and the level of vocab just right for me to understand. Given the 20-minute length, the film didn’t offer any mind-blowing insight. Among the things I “learned”:
-democracy, Senate and national assembly blah blah blah
- see happy French people eating yummy food blah blah blah
- the country has several regions (really? There are regions in a country? And wait…France is a country? Sorry…saw a YouTube clip of So You’re Smarter Than a 5th Grader or whatever it’s called and this blonde woman didn’t know France was a country…oh vey) blah blah blah
- it’s a country of liberty, equality, and fraternity
- focus on liberty…cut to footage of France’s two national sports: people on strike, demonstrating in the street…and then people going nuts watching a World Cup match on a big screen outdoors. Yes, the people are free to fight for their right and then get wasted watching football.
- focus on equality. The narration makes a big deal of explaining how women and men are totally equal in France. Um, maybe I’m confused, but isn’t this not 1979? Then, and I shit you not, as the narration explained that women had as many professional options as men, they showed footage of a female nurse (traditionally a female profession) and a female bus driver…so this is what it means to have equal rights in France? Just when I think the equality segment is over, there’s a quick flash of a female senator. Pfew, they nearly redeemed themselves. [Footnote: I fully acknowledge that I hail from a modern society in which women truly enjoy the same rights and career options as men. Many immigrants to France come from some Middle Eastern and North African nations where, sadly, women are still second-class or even third-class citizens. For these people, stressing gender equality is surely a crucial point. However, the way the film presented the notion of gender equality was just laughable.]
- But glaringly absent: any mention of racial equality or cultural diversity. On the one hand, I’m surprised. Maybe I’m just coming from a very American PC perspective. But on the other hand, I’m aware that racism is alive and well France (I’ve heard some people glibly make racist comments and it’s a subject I discuss with my students quite often – they all confirm that it’s out in the open, at least far more than in the States). Given that I was one of the few white people in the room, the omission was all the more disturbing.
- focus on fraternity: many social services are available. So many social services, so little time.

I then wait nearly an hour for my interview with the social assistant. She, unlike some other public employees I’ve encountered in the past, is super nice and pleasant. Score! I handle the spoken interview (all in French) with relative ease. She has me fill out some paperwork and then gives me a language assessment, which (especially if it stands apart from the entire spoken interview) is a complete joke. It consists of four fill-in-the-blank sentences (missing words all provided) and a short, simple writing task. Passing is no problem, and consequently I will not need formal language training from the French government. But I’m not walking out scot-free…I have to take a compulsory full day of civic training on the ins and outs of the French government. Oh joy. Boring, check; informative, check; just another hoop to jump through…this process is never-ending.

After the interview, I wait and wait and wait for my medical consultation. I get called into the nurse’s station to get weighed, measured, get a blood pressure reading, and complete a vision test. Then it’s back to the waiting room, for another hour, until the doctor calls me in. Thank goodness I brought a book…although I would’ve never come without something to entertain myself with. I’m shocked that in a room of over 50 people, almost no one there has anything to do. They’re all just sitting and staring into space. No newspaper, book, nothing. The guy sitting next to me impatiently jiggles his leg, which causes my seat to shake. Grr. The guy on the other side of me has a Nintendo DS and is busy working his Mario mojo. He is, I think, the only other person in the room who has something to do. Anyhow, I finally get called in by the doctor, who breezes through her list of questions, scans my list of vaccinations, and views my pulmonary x-rays (both were required in advance of this appointment, yet more errands I had to run). Good thing the shortest parts of the morning come at the end! Because then I’m off to the final stage of the process, where I turn in all my completed paperwork, pay an exorbitant 275 euros, and get my fancy, laminated residency card. Niiiiiiiiiice.

So it’s (very nearly) done! I’m now legal for 10 years, people! We’re popping a bottle of champagne to celebrate as I type these final words.

Where Have All the Happy BART Riders Gone?

My blog has been mostly upbeat thus far, but after nearly six months of living here, it’s finally time to succumb to what seems to be a national epidemic – complaining. In all honesty, I don’t have much (if anything) to complain about, but there I go, thinking like the stereotypical “positive American.” (My students tell me that I am one of these, said with an air of incredulity as if they’ve just encountered some mythical being in the flesh. They can’t comprehend how anyone could be so sunny in disposition while not on her fourth vacation of the year.) But here’s the dirty truth: while I am a fairly positive person, there’s one aspect of my daily life that can drive me perilously close to the edge. As James Taylor famously said on The Simpsons, I’m not as laid-back as people think.

You see, I have to contend with the Metro and RER (high-speed commuter train) not only every workday, but also sometimes several times within a workday in order to travel from client to client. And while I love the local public transportation system in and of itself, I absolutely can’t stand the way people behave on it. As the French would say, c’est insupportable. Observe.

In San Francisco, people gently queue up single-file to wait for the BART, and then observe the law of waiting one’s turn to get on board. Yeah, SF may be a utopian paragon of public behavior, but even NYC commuters (and I’m well acquainted) are not as bad as Parisians. When getting onto a train car here, people just do not give disembarking passengers a chance in hell. Sure, some people politely wait off to the side, but many more stampede onto the car right into the flow of disembarking traffic, not even stepping out of the way. Maybe this is why people preparing to disembark at the upcoming stop feel the need to rush at the doors before the train has even pulled into the station. The rest of us get jostled around quite a bit, with no pardon’s, excuse-moi’s, nothing.

The RER is even worse than the Metro. People who are towards the back of the embarking mass feel the need to push the crowd onto the train to ensure they, too, get on. And I mean, aggressively push. And nobody bitches about it, which is the weird thing. I get my glare on, not like that changes a thing – especially not the time I almost got (accidentally) shoved down a flight of stairs within the RER train by a swell of people pushing their way inside.

Sometimes it’s comical. The pushers push just close enough to get one foot onto the uber-packed train car, with the rest of their bodies hanging off the train but ready to smoosh into the crowd on board at the last minute. It’s so delusional. Why bother? One time I blurted out, “Are you fucking kidding me?” when observing not one, but three people trying to do this—they would’ve catapulted right into me. I think my outburst startled them just enough - even if they didn't understand it - to make them lose their nerve. Ha. I win. Psycho commuters, you lose.

I don’t get it. It’s not like we’re in some Indiana Jones movie and the stone wall of doom is being rapidly lowered to seal us into a chamber of scorpions. We all have more than enough time to go about our business in a civilized, timely manner before the train doors automatically close. And the next train is coming 3-5 minutes later!!! So why the man-eat-man antics?

Something else I always love is walking onto a semi-crowded train to find some guy leaning up against the pole in the center of the train car, basically taking up all the real estate that could be used for at least half a dozen hands to grab onto. But no, he has to keep on leaning and then gets all self-righteously indignant if the person adjacent (who, by the way, has NOTHING to hold onto and can therefore only rely on her former yoga practice to help manage her balance on the constantly swerving train—I mean, it can be a fun game except for when she) very slightly bumps into him. And although I’m sure it sounds like it, I’m not talking about an isolated incident, people.

The survival-of-the-fittest phenomenon doesn’t only have to occur on the train, my friends. There’s also a world of adventure inside the station! Parisians will shamelessly cut you in your bid to get on a crowded escalator. Not just merge-style cutting, which is pretty harmless—I’m talking about rushing up to the front of the line, lunging in front of you, overt ops cutting. Just the other day I’d had enough of the cutting and didn’t let this chick have her way in the line. It might’ve been an accident, but right after she got onto the escalator right behind me, her heavy laptop bag just happened to swing right into my calves. Seriously?! (The cutting is not limited to underground escalators. I’ve seen people try to cut even on shorter lines at a handful of places, such as the bakery. Will the extra minute or two of waiting really kill you?)

And then, my favorite move of all: people will stop short, either right at the base of the escalator or right at the top, blocking everyone behind them and consequently creating a pile-up. Why choose this precise moment to stop moving? Is there not a ginormous line of people behind you? You know, the line that you just cut to get on the escalator? Unbelievable how all that cut-throat cunning suddenly gives way to total obliviousness.

Pfew. OK, breathe, breathe, it's gonna be OK. Go to your happy place!

Clearly, I can get worked up about this--when taken in isolation, these incidents are slight annoyances at worst, but they have a way of adding up when you ride public transport as much as I do. So there, I vented like the best of the French complainers and now I can go back to being happy and light and fluffy and laid-back with unicorns and rainbows and pixie dust and all that weird, icky “positive American” stuff. Speaking of stereotypes, someone once told me that the French are impatient. I think I believe that one now.

My Latest Accomplishment

After some time away from blogging, I’m back with the latest installment of my carte de séjour saga. You may remember my posts from months hence, detailing the trials of navigating this horrendously bureaucratic process. Those light-hearted, playfully sarcastic missives were spawned from a more fresh-faced, wide-eyed, innocent (or dare I say, naïve) version of my expat self. My experiences with this process have since turned me into a hardened, cynical (or dare I say, more begrudgingly realistic) woman, one who’s resigned to a potential fate of always missing one document and thus forced to return to the Prefecture every three months – my imagined “Groundhog’s Day”-esque personal version of hell. Overly dramatic? Maybe. Entirely warranted in this country? Yes.

We arrived at the Préfecture at the appointed time of 8:45am with my hefty folder containing every darn official paper the French government deems necessary for the residency process, including copies of both our passports, proof of our marriage translated into French, a bank statement in my name (thank gawd we were able to clear that issue up in a timely five-month manner), my lease, a letter proving I am currently awaiting my French social security number, and our 2006 tax documents. That’s all!

We got on the queue winding practically around the corner from the building entrance and slowly but surely inched our way into the building, where upon entering had to go through “security” – a bag x-ray contraption of the airport variety, except the two guys appointed to the demanding task of watching the items passing through on the screen had their backs turned to the monitor and were busy chatting about weekend plans and showing each other pictures stored in their cell phones. Good thing I smuggled in all that contraband.

Then we went to the dreaded room where dreams are crushed and fates are sealed: the Foreigner Services Department, Americas Region, the French government’s equivalent to the Pit of Sarlac (that was for all you Star Wars geeks), the dominion of my favorite fonctionnaire to date, La Vache Bête, the woman who was painfully malicious on our last visit. We took a number and I said a silent prayer that we wouldn’t be called to her window. After a surprisingly short beat, we were called to the window neighboring hers. Pfew.

On my previous visit, I had only advanced my French skills so far and I’d had food poisoning the day before, so I’d been in no condition to parler français bien. This time, Nate and I equally vowed to only revert to English when absolutely necessary. My initial attempts to speak French seemed to sit well with the lady handling us, but we reached a hurdle when she asked for my dossier. What dossier? You don’t mean the bulging folder of documents I’ve plopped onto your table? No, the dossier this department has prepared. You should’ve received it when the receptionist clocked you in and gave you your number. Go back to the waiting area while we locate it. Great.

15 minutes can be excruciatingly long when you’re tired, not in the least happy to be where you are, and assaulted by a TV screen blaring the French infomercial channel, which you (of course) must pay for the privilege of calling to enquire about the godawful products advertised. After watching some guy shill a parade of tacky Cuisinart-like devices, we were called back.

I started presenting my documents. Of course, one was wrong (because it was so clearly described in the first place), but miraculously, “c’est pas grave” (it’s not serious). What follows is a long period of the fonctionnaire examining the documents and hand-writing some details in my dossier. At one point, La Vache Bête peers over and seemingly recognizes us. We politely smile and say hello through slightly gritted teeth, but she’s surprisingly nice and starts making small talk. She grumbles (like the last time we saw her) that she’s annoyed to be at work and it’s Friday, but still barely 9:00. Nate takes this cue to launch into a long complaint about his workweek (which, admittedly, was not a cakewalk what with two days of unnecessary training, a one-day business trip to Montpelier, and now this). It works like magic, as she’s nodding sympathetically and making comments of solidarity. Nate has broken the barrier by speaking her language, the lingua franca of bitching and moaning. I proceed to win the ladies over by dramatically rolling my eyes and saying teasingly, “Ah, c’est dure, c’est très dure “ (Oh, it’s tough, it’s so tough). Even though I’m not speaking in complainy code, they like the marital theatrics.

Eventually the fonctionnaire is satisfied and has drained all the ink in her pen writing in my file. However, it’s not over yet. I have to go to a different building in the complex to make my requisite medical exam appointment, which consists of a series of medical questions and an x-ray (in case, you know, Jimmy Hoffa or America’s secret Iraq strategy is hidden in my rib cage). I schedule my appointment and get a brochure about the government services provided to naturalized residents. I am “entitled” to (more like required to commit to): an opportunity to attend a collective meeting to welcome newcomers (I’m not much of a newcomer after nearly six months of living here, but OK), an individual interview to assess my level of French (hmm), a day of civic training to present the fundamental rights, principles, and values of the French Republic (let the propaganda begin), and information session on life in France (but will it be snarky?), and if I cannot speak French, a language training course adapted to my needs (that would pretty darn cool, if not for…) culminating in the examination to obtain the initial diploma in French. Ending in this friendly warning label: “If you do not respect your commitments, the préfet could terminate your contract, refuse to renew your residence permit or to issue a residence card.” Jeez. I haven’t heard anything about this.

Anyhow, I returned to the Americas Region office to make a copy of my medical appointment slip and turn it in, so it could be added to my bulging dossier. I have to go back one last time after the medical exam, at my leisure (no appointment = spending half the day waiting to get seen, probably) to finally receive my resident permit. But I can’t do this right after the medical exam. No, I have to wait at least one additional month after then for reasons that are unclear. Well, I won’t question it. All I know is, I’m two months away from getting the damn card, at last!

And so ends the latest chapter. I’m happy to report that the steely pessimism I’d cultivated all this time was for naught. Now that I’ve passed the most annoying and time-consuming of obstacles, a weight has been lifted. Or maybe not. Gotta figure out this language exam situation…although I can probably pass with flying colors if I demonstrate fluency in the lingua franca of complaining.

Up in Smoke

On January 1st, I awoke in our SF hotel to see the headline splattered across the front page of USA Today (oh please, it was a standard hotel-room paper delivery – like we’d ever pay money for that rag): French Smoking Ban in Effect (or something like that). Oh, that’s right! Nearly a week in California and we’d completely readjusted to cigarette-free restaurants, cafés, and bars without looking back. What a relief to know that upon our return to France, we could enjoy more of the same.

Who would have thought it could ever happen? Banning smoking in public places in France?!?! That’s like abolishing pasta in Italy or the siesta in Spain. Smoking is so ingrained in the lifestyle here that even people who don’t “truly” smoke have the more-than-just-occasional post-meal cigarette, hikers have been known to light up and puff away while trudging up steep inclines, and more traffic accidents have been caused by cyclists trying to light up mid-ride than by drunk drivers (OK, I made that last one up, but it’s probably not far from the truth). True, sitting in a Parisian bar for over an hour could cause even regular smokers to feel headachy and get teary-eyed because of the perpetual haze permeating the space. But per the French mentality, smoking in public wasn’t a privilege – it was a right! A right that has now been stripped away. Sure, it’s the wave of the future (or of a decade ago), but change is sometimes slow in France and protecting one’s rights is paramount.

And so, we have the inevitable fallout. In the aforementioned USA Today article, a 19-year-old French student was quoted as being staunchly against the law because it was “ridiculous! How can you drink a coffee without having a cigarette? That is unthinkable.” (That quote works even better if you say it aloud in an atrocious French accent.)

One of my more mature students is less extreme in her resistance to the law, but she is less than pleased. For her, smoking is a social activity and she doesn’t like to do it alone. She feels inconvenienced to have to invite friends up to her apartment to join her for a cigarette on her spacious balcony overlooking a 270-degree view of the city.

Some citizens are siding with the government - the traitors! We came home one day last week to find a sign posted in our tiny (approx. 3’x3’) elevator (see the "before" photo). The translation: please do not smoke in the elevator, thank you. Wow. We may not use the elevator every day, but in our four months living here we’ve never noticed it reeking of stale smoke. Anyway, someone wasn’t happy with this fascist propaganda, because the sign didn’t last a week. One night we went out for dinner and had to take a photo of what we thought was a preciously hilarious sign. We returned from dinner to discover the most heinous, politically-motivated act of vandalism I’ve seen on this side of the pond since I landed in London on the night the Germans beat the Brits in the World Cup semis (’96) and saw drunken buffoons carousing around the streets smashing BMW windows (yes, I was very afraid). Anyhow, see the "after" photo. Note to selves: anti-smoking ideology is obviously not popular in our building.

However, not everyone is clawing away at no-smoking signs. (Which, by the way, are tiny stickers posted in the corners of restaurants that blithely offer a phone number – which one must of course pay for per minute – to help smokers learn how to quit. Aw, how cute, all tucked away back there where prying eyes can’t find ‘em.) Even if they’re not slapping on the Patch just yet, there are Frenchmen and women who are more open to the benefits of the law. A pregnant acquaintance who is still puffing away daily told me she’s glad there’s no more smoking in public because it’s healthier for the baby. This, without a shred of irony.

A Christmas Miracle & Other Sundry Observances

Many of you enjoyed N’s irate rant against the banking system. When he last reported on our banking situation, our account had been kicked back into unverified status because I’d been officially added to the joint account (only after 3 months of intermittent attempts). We therefore couldn’t complete any wire transfers and other regular banking tasks. Well, just when we thought our banking situation couldn’t get any worse, we experienced a true Christmas miracle. We went to the bank on Sat. to manually request a wire transfer of rent to our landlord. The banker (not our normal inefficient, garrulous, can-never-do-two-things-at-once banker, but a weekend substitute) informed us that not only was our account verified and able to handle electronic wire transfers from the Internet, but also that our new checks and my ATM card had arrived. What’s going on? We can actually handle multiple banking tasks on one visit? Our job is not to truly question this miraculous efficiency, but rather bask in it…and of course, to not get too used to the feeling.

Otherwise the city has become relatively quiet. We’ve had an easier time getting seated at restaurants, waited on a miniscule line at Centre Pompidou to see the Giacometti exhibit (très cool), and have observed a pervasive tranquility about town. Except on the Champs-Élysées the other night, where we went to check out the famous holiday light displays. It was booming with activity (both tourists and locals), but it was well worth navigating through the throngs to see the sparkles and streaks of luminescence in the four rows of trees lining the grand boulevard. While there, we strolled by what must be the flagship Louis Vuitton store—four stories high, with signature bags upon bags bedecking the window displays, and an enormous LV logo in garish lights at the very top of the building. There was a waiting line to get in, complete with velvet rope, but the store was kind enough to put heating lamps outside to warm those who braved the cold just to get in. (Can we say, SUCKAS?!)

Today people are running around crazed, doing their last-minute shopping. I waited on the longest line ever at the bakery this morning, just to get some bread (and not mountains of baked goods for Christmas dinner). However, it wasn’t so terrible waiting for 15 minutes, as I got to ogle the gorgeous bouchettes de Noël (miniature log-shaped Christmas cakes) that our bakery had decked out with all kinds of adorable accoutrements, some edible (candy tuille, chocolate shavings, cassis berries and other fruits, marzipan, mini-macarons) and some inedible but absolutely precious (miniature wrapped gifts, Xmas trees, mistletoe, and elves). It may sound tacky, but believe me when the French go OTT (over the top) with pastries, it is always to absolutely, flawlessly tasteful effect. They are such works of art that one almost doesn’t want to eat them.

And although we don’t technically celebrate Christmas, I got a pretty darn fabulous Xmas present this year: a vendor lavished a generous gift certificate to the Four Seasons George V spa upon N and he in turn gave it to me. Oh yeah!! I’ll be spending Christmas getting a massage and enjoying their sauna and hammam, followed by some cozy time chez nous, a delicious home-cooked dinner, and Bordeaux. Then we jet off to Cali for a few days to reconnect with our old home and dear friends.

And with that, L’Étrangère is on hiatus until the New Year. Happy holidays and wishing you a marvelous ’08.